PhD Dissertation: Smart Urban Governance: Governing Cities in the “Smart” Era

Building a smart city requires “smart” governance approaches, including new government structures, new relationships, and new processes. My doctoral research conceptualizes smart urban governance that can achieve better governance processes and outcomes in the “smart” era and investigates the role that ICT can play in smart urban governance. The conceptualization of smart urban governance responds to arguments that alternatives to corporate-led, technocratic smart governance should take the urban into account and be more aware of how urban issues and the relevant smart solution are socially produced. It explores the role of the situated agents and their contribution to promoting a demand-driven smart governance. It also highlights a sociotechnical approach to ICT development and implementation. In other words, it is necessary to understand why smart technologies are designed, developed, and implemented as an appropriate answer to the perceived and constructed problems. Finally, smart urban governance highlights the importance of contextual factors for finding solutions to urban challenges. We therefore propose smart urban governance as a sociotechnical way of governing cities in the smart era by starting with the urban issue at stake, promoting demand-driven governance modes, and shaping technological intelligence more socially, given the specific context.